Chapter 8

Silence. Stillness.

Nothing was moving, nothing was noising, all was silent and still. Paula had the vague impression somewhere in her mind that she was alive, that there was breath moving in and out of her lungs. She shifted her weight slightly and found that she could MOVE, that She could FEEL! With an almost superhuman effort the girl sat up and opened her eyes.

She was sitting in the middle of a forest clearing, and it was broad daylight. Lying beside her was Carl, stark naked and covered with scratches and cuts. Paula examined her own body and saw that she too was naked, and in fact her own flesh bore even stronger signs of physical damage. '

Ten feet away loomed a large object, a thing that looked both lovingly familiar and frighteningly alien. With a groan of pain Paula stood up and took as many steps as she could towards the thing, until at last she could see what it was.

A green sports car.

Carl's sports car.

The one that he and Paula had come here in.

"CARL!" the girl shouted, scarcely able to control her joy. "We got back! We made it! We made it!"

"Huh?" Carl was breathing but scarcely conscious. The blonde girl had to run over and shake him with all her might, shake him as hard as she could. "We're back, Carl! We made it! We made it!"

"We did?" The boy was wide awake now, and he and Paula were in each other's arms. "But how ... ? "

"I don't know! I don't care! But the important thing is we're both alive!"

"We're alive, yeah," the boy muttered morosely. "With no clothes and a car with no engine. It's about twenty miles back to town, and I don't look forward to hitchhiking stark naked ... " Suddenly Carl stopped in his tracks, and pointed at something. "Look," he whispered, in the tone of voice of a man who does not dare believe what he is seeing.

"Look at what?" Paula asked, straining to see what it was her boy friend was pointing at.

"The car!"

"What about the car?" Paula frowned. Apparently the ordeal had taken its toll on her boy friend's sanity.

"Don't you SEE?" And now the naked youth was running towards the green sports car. "The engine! Frog pulled the engine out of the car and tore it apart! He threw it all over the place! But now it's all right!" He yanked open the car's bonnet and glanced at the motor inside. "There it is!"

Paula was bewildered. "But how ... ? " And then she saw something even more amazing. "Look, Carl!" she shouted. "Our clothes! Yours and mine! Lying in a heap!"

"But that's right where we left them," Carl pointed out.

"No it isn't," the blonde girl countered. "I know that you left YOUR clothes here, but mine were left in the Arena back at Ravenspur. So how did they get here?" She shook her head. "This can't be happening."

"I know," Carl agreed. "If all the things that we think happened to us really HAD happened, we'd hardly be ALIVE right now, never mind walking and talking and running."

Paula's nose wrinkled in exasperation. "Do you think it was a dream then?"

The boy shook his head. "No. Not a dream. It's too REAL to be a dream." Suddenly an inspiration sprang to life inside his eyes. "But I think I know what it COULD be...."

"What, Carl?" the girl inquired. But Carl didn't answer. Instead he was striding resolutely towards the front seat of the sports car. He yanked open the glove compartment and pulled out a small object that glinted brightly in the sun. "Here."

"What is it?"

Carl tossed her the thing, and Paula caught it. It was a tiny plastic cylinder, hollow, with a white plastic cap on one end. A pill bottle. A bottle that was used to keep pills in....

"Don't you remember?" she heard Carl asking. "Before we came out here we dropped acid. You told me you wanted to see what it was like to fuck in the middle of an acid trip. Well, we've been ON that trip. And now we're back!"

Paula didn't know whether to believe this or not. She saw the scratch marks on Carl's naked body and pointed to them. "But if it was all an acid trip how come we have these scratches all over our bodies? How come I'm still bleeding?"

Carl pointed triumphantly at the spot where he and Paula had been lying a minute ago. Paula looked, and there stood the twisted wreckage of a mass of vegetation that might once have been a bramble bush.

"Don't you see?" Carl was laughing out loud now. "We were such damn fools that we went and fucked in the middle of a bramble bush, and we were so laid back on that acid that we never even felt it! No WONDER we're so cut up!"

Paula nodded sagely. It was all beginning to make sense now. She felt something hard pressing against the palm of her hand, and she looked down to see the empty pill bottle. She remembered being fucked by Carl, and how beautiful it had felt. Then she remembered the Arena, and Bertie, and Veena's eyes, and all the other things that she had seen and heard and felt under the influence of the acid. I must be a damned fool, Paula thought, to fuck around with acid, to make myself see and hear such awful things that aren't really there, when I have something so much nicer than acid. I have Carl. And I have Sex. That's the nicest trip of all.

Paula didn't speak. She turned away from Carl, and started walking, walking towards the edge of the clearing. And then suddenly she was running, and as she ran her right hand flew upwards and a small plastic object shot out of her hand and deep, deep into the darkness of the woods beyond, where Paula would never find it again even if she wanted to.

When Paula turned around Carl was right behind her. She kissed him lightly on the corner of his mouth.

"Let's go home," he heard her whisper hoarsely. "Let's go home and fuck."

The two of them turned, and started walking back towards the sports car.